Ashley is 4 years younger than Michael. For the last 3 years, Michael and Ashley have been going to the same school. Eleven years ago, Michael was 3 times older than Ashley. How old is Michael now?
We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Michael and Ashley. Let Michael's current age be $m$ and Ashley's current age be $a$ The information in the first sentence can be expressed in the following equation: $m = a + 4$ Eleven years ago, Michael was $m - 11$ years old, and Ashley was $a - 11$ years old. The information in the second sentence can be expressed in the following equation: $m - 11 = 3(a - 11)$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. Because we are looking for $m$ , it might be easiest to solve our first equation for $a$ and substitute it into our second equation. Solving our first equation for $a$ , we get: $a = m - 4$ . Substituting this into our second equation, we get the equation: $m - 11 = 3($ $(m - 4)$ $ -$ $ 11)$ which combines the information about $m$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying the right side of this equation, we get: $m - 11 = 3m - 45$ Solving for $m$ , we get: $2 m = 34$ $m = 17$.